Facs
Transcript
The situation after the First World war [sic.] was one of strong prophetic feeling about the signs of the times, about the breaking in of a kairos, something eternal, something ultimate, into our temporal existence, and out of this consciousness an immense creativity, in all realms of spiritual life... After the Second World War there was also a kairos, but a negative one. It was not the feeling of something positive which can and must be done now, or which will come upon us now, but it was a feeling of a void, an emptiness, a vacuum. And then I said – and I repeat this now – this vacuum, which many of us still feel, should not be covered over by anything whatsoever, in terms of religion or culture. It should not be covered over by the resurgence of religion, as we experience it today, if this resurgence is a form of escape from the emptiness of our situation. It should not be covered over by cultural creativity, neither in the technical realm, where it is going on at a tremendous pace all the time, nor in the spiritual realms which are more fundamental. But if there is a basic feeling of emptiness, if the autonomous culture which has ruled for the last 500 years has come to a point where its lack of ultimacy is felt by all of us as a real threat to our personality and society, then perhaps a presupposition is given not in the sense of a kairos, where we are asked to act, but in terms of a kairos where we are asked to stand, and to wait – to wait not in the sense of passivity, but in the sense of the most intensive tension – but not covering over the actual emptiness by activities in any realm, be it in the religious, be it in the cultural, realm. And this, I must conclude now, is indeed the meaning of this